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The Keeping

 

for Stuart. 

 

 

When someone who is loved dies,
we also break free; ricochet off into the dark.
But this world pulls us back, and so
to fill the absence, we hold our loved one here.
We say to each other,
“Do you remember when...”
and this way, we remember.

Everywhere we go, a part of us
drifts off; leaves a mark. Walls still stand
and chairs still sit, where he once was. Recalling him.
Here, he laughed, they say to us. Here, he loved.
We remember him, windows whisper.

So it is here you remain, and it is here we feel you,
in the floorboards, the ceiling.
The roof still raises with your laugh. The walls stand guard,
and all of this, holds all of us,

 

together.

 

 

Currently playing: John Martyn
Current mood: Remembering

The Gift

 

Here we are
suspended, ageless
inside poetry.
Look, the curve of your cheek
is here, and your footfall
echoes, through each finely crafted line.
And just there, you can see
where my eyelashes
sweep the length of each stanza.

Our thoughts are together dissected,
and this, is my final gift to you.
Breathe in slowly,
and you will taste us in these lines.
Fold the pages. Smaller;
tightly press along each sharp edge.
Make sure that the words do not show.

You can keep them silent.
For now, we will wear them on the inside.

 

 

 

Currently playing: Loose Women
Current mood: Full of shreddies.

The Ceramicist

 

He walks between twists of foliage.

With slim hips and bare legs he passes

through glass doors and

into a glass room, where water pools

beneath black soled feet.

He lifts clay from marble slabs, and here he is alone.

 

I stand away, in the next room.

Pale and watchful behind weeping figs

I smoke a cigarette and look through slit eyes.

As he twists water around earthenware coils

his fingers make grooves, and I smile.

 

Licking his brush to a point he smiles too,

then turning he sees I am here.

Leaning on the white wall. He asks me for food,

he is clumsy in my language.

They are words a child might use.

 

I am awkward in his.

We stop speaking.

I walk to the stove, slice bread.

 

 

Concrete

 

 

At a pavement café we sit together, apart.

It is an uncompanionable silence,

your lips are setting like concrete.

I twist and pleat the hem of my shirt

I remember that we are in the street

where Kundera once lived. I move to tell you,

feel my words catch and drop, italicise in my mind.

We have become a Laughable Love.

I beg you to tell me why, how

so I can make sense of us

before you turn to stone.

 

 

Currently playing: For time.

Mobile

 

“I can’t hear you,” you said

“You’re breaking up”

 

I was walking down a side street

and from every door I passed,

came smells that reminded me of you,

your country, your city.

Drifting across the street,

a sweet tomatoed red peppered

lazy lunchtime garlic.

English girls love all this,

when its sunglasses time I used to tell you.

No wonder we’re all so fat.

I shouted again, telling you,

how the smells had made me recall all this.

It sounded odd, repeated loudly,

all capital letters, pushed at a small phone.

Not reminiscent at all.

Tears sprang. You spoiled it.

 

You can’t hear me

I'm breaking up.

 

 

Currently playing: the feeling
Current mood: lazy

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